Muslims
in America: Profile 2001 (link fixed Nov. 26, 2001), by Abdul Malik Mujahid
of the Muslim publishing company, Sound
Vision, is a well-documented article on the latest demographic
data about Muslims in the United States.

A number of useful documents and links concerning Islam in the United States
can be found at
Islam
in the USA, a site developed by United States Information Agency (USIA),
an agency of the American government (link fixed August, 2000 and October 16, 2001). See in
particular a subpage of this site, titled Islam
in the U.S. Military, which consists largely of an interview with Rear
Admiral A. Byron Holderby, chief of Navy chaplains, and Imam Malik Abel
Matoli bin Noel, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and the first Muslim chaplain
commissioned in the Navy. (Link fixed October 17, 2001.) And at the USIA site, see as
well the
large number of Links to Articles on
Islam in America found in the commercial press. And a rich resource are the USIA site's
numerous
articles concerning American Muslims Respond to the
Terrorist Attack

The Islamic Impact on America
Today

Today the effect of Islam in American cities is noticeable. This is discussed
in the article Islam's
Urban Impact (link fixed 17 August 2005), by Ray Walsh, in the magazine The Neighborhood Works (May 3,
1996).
(Fixed 28 Oct. 1998; offline 17 November 2002.)

Another place where Islam has been having a profound impact is in the
prisons of the United States. The article by Professor Robert Dannin on
the Island in a Sea of
Ignorance (link fixed 5 February 2006) (with the accompanying photo essay "Contours and Dimensions of the
Prison
Mosque" by Jolie Stahl) discusses the history and current
reality of Islam in U.S. prisons, focusing on the case of the prisons of
New York.

The issue of participation in American political life is an important
one for American Muslims. In his article, A
New Cultural Constituency: American Muslims and The Crisis of Political
Participation, (link fixed 5 February 2006) Professor Ali Mazrui, the Director of the Institute
for Global Cultural Studies at State University of New York at Binghamton,
discusses the main aspects of the problem. (Temporarily offline while the site migrates
17 Nov. 2002.)

The Anglo-American
and Anglo-British Muslim Minority

Muslims in the United States are primarily African-American converts and
immigrant Muslims from all over the Islamic world. Nevertheless a small
percentage of Anglo-Americans have also converted. The following two contemporary
narratives may help students to understand their motivation:
The
conversion narrative of Noah Keller (link fixed Nov. 26, 2001 and Nov. 17, 2002) is
both an interesting
critique
of Western culture and a window into the mind of a philosophically informed
Anglo-American convert to Islam. The account of the Anglo-American poet,
Daniel Moore, titled Choosing
Islam -- One Man's Tale (link fixed 5 February 2006), shows the process of conversion to Islam from
a counter-cultural direction (link fixed August, 2000 and on Nov. 17, 2002). A good
example of Moore's
poetry
is Ramadan Sonnets.
Here you can read them or listen to him reciting them if you have Real Player
(November 26, 2001)
. The
Anglo-American
convert Michael Wolfe (interviewed at length while in Mecca during the
Hajj of 1997 by Ted Koppel on a Nightline special) has written of
his pilgrimage to Mecca in popular book The
Hajj and in his articleThe Turning of Arrival, which is
one of the many pilgrimage narratives that he includes in a book that he edited One
Thousand
Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Writing About the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Grove,
1997) and included here in the Utne Field Guide to Sacred Travel(Link fixed
August, 2000 and Nov. 17, 2002). One of the more famous
Anglo-British converts to Islam is a former rock musician known before his conversion
as Cat Stevens. Since his conversion in 1977 his name has been Yusuf Islam.
The autobiographical account of his embrace of Islam is titled How
I came to Islam. Although for a number of years after his conversion
Yusuf Islam did produce any music, he has recently resumed selected musical
activities, most notably singing with Malaysian group Raihan on two tracks
of their popular 1997 CD, "Syukur" (Thankfulness).

American Muslim Women

In spite of the impression dominant in the West that Islam is oppressive
to women, the majority of American converts to Islam are women. One can read what
some of Words of American Women Who
Have Converted to Islam (link fixed 17 August 2005), excerpted from the book written
by Carol Amway, a Christian mother of one such convert,Daughters
of Another Path tells a number of their stories (Back on-line 12/24/97).
One such account is that of Christine
Huda Dodge. (Link fixed 12/20/97 and November 17, 2002)

African-American Islam

Conversion to Islam among African-Americans is a significant feature of American
Islamic life. In spite of a generally negative portrayal by the U.S. media, Islam
is rapidly gaining converts in the U.S. One such conversion was that of
African-American writer Steven Barboza. Read his account of his conversion, titled, My
Journey to Islam.

One of the causes of the continuing conversion of African-Americans
to Islam is the contrast between their brutal and racist enslavement at
the hands of Anglo-Americans in the United States, on the one hand, and
the relative absence of racism in Islam, on the other. Although one dimension
of the current anti-Islamic polemic in the West is the highlighting of
the occurence of slavery both in Islamic history and today in Sudan and
Mauritania, this has failed to turn away many African-Americans from Islam.
There are a number of reasons for this:

the Qur'an repeatedly condemns oppressors;

the Qur'an exhorts people to free their slaves;

while slavery has occured in the Muslim world, it has not been racist;

slavery in the Muslim world was largely a way of dealing with prisoners
of war who were then ransomed back to their own people.

Given the clear opposition of Islam to injustice, the Islamic virtue
of not practicing slavery, and the relatively recent horrors of African-American
slavery, why have Muslims not put an end to slavery in the Muslim world?

I suspect that the answer to this lies in the fact that in most
areas of the Muslim world, Muslims are themselves not free to act politically,
that they are preoccupied with other local struggles against injustice,
or are constrained by poverty. If my suspicion is correct, in the future
as Muslims gradually emerge from the bondage of neocolonial dictatorships
and/or poverty, we should see Muslims at the forefront of those activists
who are striving to end all forms of slavery. See the article by BBC Correspondent
David Hecht titled "Slavery"
African Style in order to get some insight into the nature of slavery
in Mauritania today.

On the other hand, if Muslims do not actively work to end slavery,
Islam will no doubt lose much of its appeal to people for whom oppression
is a reality. See the article
Slavery
in Islam for useful source material.

The Nation
of Islam, Malcolm X, W.D. Muhammad, and Louis Farrakhan

Roughly 42% of the total Muslim population in the US are African-Americans. This amounts to about 2.1 million
people. For many years of the twentieth century
the primary form of Islam that they embraced was that of the Nation of
Islam. In recent years, however, many African-Americans have begun the
practice of mainstream Sunni Islam.

Malcolm X's transformation into a Sunni Muslim has been influential
in the move to Sunni Islam among African-Americans. His Letter
from Mecca, (link fixed 5 February 2006) excerpted from the
Autobiography of Malcolm X, expresses
this transformation.

The key factor in this transition after the death of Elijah Mohammed
(the founder of the Nation of Islam) was the leadership of his son, Imam
W. Deen Mohammed. General information and news concerning him can be found
at his site,
The Ministry
of Imam W. Deen Mohammed (link fixed 17 August 2005).

On the other hand, Minister Louis Farrakhan has continued the teachings
of Elijah Mohammed and is the present leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI).
The fundamental beliefs of the NOI are found at their Web page under the
title The Muslim Program.
See their Web page The Nation of
Islam Online (links fixed 5 February 2006) here.

Recently, however, Minister Farrakhan appears to have begun to move
toward mainstream Sunni Islam. This shift was made public at the recent
conference that he convened entitled, "Islam in the New Century." The conference,
held in Chicago from July 3-6, 1997, was an international Islamic conference
at which Muslim scholars representing a number of schools of Islamic thought,
in addition to a few scholars and activists in the NOI, gave talks. Minister
Farrakhan himself spoke at length on a number of occasions, during which
time he explained the process of transformation that the NOI has undergone.
At one point, in the following manner, he likened this process to a plant
that must produce strong roots below ground in order to survive. After
the plant has become deeply rooted, the plant can produce shoots above
ground without the danger of being destroyed. Now, he asserted, the NOI
has come into the world above ground, the Islamic world.

Observers will note, however, that if the NOI is to move into mainstream
Sunni Islam, Minister Farrakhan will have to further articulate the basic
beliefs of the NOI in a manner that will not leave it vulnerable to Islamic
criticism such as that which has been leveled against it in the following
link (written prior to NOI's shift toward mainstream Islam).

National American Islamic
Organizations

Primarily African-American National Islamic Organizations

The Mosque Cares (link fixed 5 February 2006) appears to be the current name of the organization headed by Imam W. Deen Mohammed (another name of the organization appears to be the Muslim American Society). The organization has been publishing
the Muslim Journal for a number of
years. Imam W. D. Mohammed's organization has issued a Community
Purpose Statement (link fixed 17 August 2005). A general
description of the organization, its purposes, and programs is titled Acquaintance
Information for Community
Progress (link fixed 17 August 2005) and appears to be an official document of the organization, a
document designed for new and existing members and
containing, in addition, the names and addresses of people to contact for
more information. Talks of Imam W. D. Mohammed can be seen and heard
online at New Africa Radio.
This Muslim American
Society headed by W. Deen Mohammed is completely different from another
Muslim American Society
(MAS) (link fixed 17 August 2005), in Alexandria, VA, which is an offshoot of ISNA.

Ethnically Mixed National American
Islamic
Organizations

These are organizations comprised of all ethnic groups but not
primarily consisting of any one ethnicity. A
major division among Non-African-American Muslim organizations
revolves
around their attitude to traditional Islamic Sufism (tasawwuf).

Sunni
Organizations That Are Sympathetic to Sufism

Note that having a positive attitude toward traditional Sufism does
not necessarily mean that these organizations should be called
Sufi
organizations, but it does mean, for example, that in addition to
devotion to God they hold in high esteem devotion to the
Prophet Muhammad and celebrations of that devotion.

Zaytuna Institute
headed by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
(Hanson) is very influential among second generation immigrant Muslims
in the West and among converts (reverts) to Islam.

Dar al
Islam Based in New Mexico (and maintaining an office in
Fairfax, VA), their website is a particularly rich
resource of articles
that are both progressive and harmonious with traditional Islam, even
though the organization has been influenced to some degree by
Salafi/Wahhabi Islam.

ISRA (Islamic
Studies and Research Association),
based in South Carolina.

TAM (The American
Muslim) headed by Sheila Musaji
(a Euro-American convert) is an organization
whose main activity involves the publication of a recently
revived journal of the same name.

Sunni Organizations That Have Not Generally Been Sympathetic
to Sufism

As of 2002, the vast majority of non-African-American Muslims in
America have been affiliated with these organizations, which have
tended to be
influenced by Salafi, Ikhwani, Wahhabi, and Deobandi schools of
thought. Although Muslim organizations sympathethic to Sufism
sometimes see the following organizations as extreme (relative to
traditional Islam) on account of their negative
attitude to Sufism and devotion to the Prophet Muhammad, this
"extreme" quality should not lead one to think that these are
extremist organizations, in the way the term is used today by the
Western media to denote an organization that espouses violence.

The on-line journal ISIM
Newsletter, which is produced by the International Institute for the
Study of Islam in the Modern World at Leiden University is an excellent
source containing numerous articles. Issue
#1, Issue
#2, and
Issue
#3.

Islam Today in the Various Regions of the Muslim
World

Islam and the Middle East

MEDEA Database
MEDEA (European Institute for Research on
Mediterranean and
Euro-Arab Co-operation) is a hypertext encyclopedic database for much that is significant in the political arena of
the Middle East today. It contains information such as amounts of monetary aid to Israel and Egypt, important UN
Security Council resolutions, and names of many significant political leaders in the Middle East and North Africa
today.

Management and
Mismanagement of Diversity: The case of ethnic conflict and state-building
in the Arab World by political-sociologist Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim,
Ibn Khaldoun Center and American University, Cairo. The article includes
an overview of the conflicts and ethnic divides in the Arab world; the
issue of identity; state-building; social mobilization and equity; foreign
penetration and ethnicity; and the relationship between ethnicity, civil
society, and democratization. Islam is mentioned in various places throughout
the article, but is discussed in particular with regard to the relationship
between ethnicity and the vision of contemporary Islamists.

Islam and Jordan

Islamists,
the State, and
Cooperation in Jordan by Quintan Wiktorowicz, professor of Political
Science at Shippersburg University in Pennsylvania, published in Arab
Studies Quarterly, Fall 1999. This article discusses in detail the
relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jordanian government.(Offline as of
Nov.
22, 2001; back online, June 2004); A similar article also by Prof.
Wiktorowicz is State
Power and the Regulation of Islam in Jordan (link fixed 17 August 2005), originally published in the Journal of
Church & State, Autumn 1999 but
now online at the Encyclopedia
Britannica.

Ex-spy
chiefs fault Sharon's policy Four former heads of Israel's
Shin Bet, the organization responsible for maintaining security
within Israel, strongly criticized Sharon's draconian military
solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (By
Greg Myre in the International
Herald Tribue, Nov. 15, 2003 -- originally published in the New
York Times.)

Land
without a People
, by historian Michael Palumbo, is
ch. 1 from his book, Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948
Expulsion of a
People From Their Homeland (published in 1987).

US-Israel-Palestine
at ZNet on April 11, 2002,
by Noam Chomsky, the world famous linguist and
political activist. This article
gives a view of the crisis that is not often found in mainstream
American
newsmedia.

The
Jewish Divide on Israel by Esther Kaplan in The Nation
(June 24, 2004), discusses the pressure exerted on American
Jewish voices for peace by the major
American Jewish organizations in order to eliminate growing
dissent from
Israel's hardline policies.

The
Myth of a 'Land Without People for a People Without Land' by
Roger Garaudy, a important French intellectual and convert to
Islam,
published in Journal of Historical Review (JHR), vol. 18, no. 5.
(Readers should note the following four points:
1) as is discussed in
the editor's introduction
to this
article, Garaudy, in spite of his advanced age
and considerable intellectual credentials,
was convicted in France of "Holocaust denial." As far as I am
aware of, however, there is nothing in this particular chapter
that is
ojectionable regarding the Holocaust. In fact much of this
chapter consists of a variety of useful quotations.
2) the editor in his introduction (not Garaudy), on the other
hand, does mark himself as a Holocaust denier by referring to
the "Holocaust extermination story."
3) the Institute of Historical Review (IHR), which publishes the
JHR, is regarded by the Anti-Defamation League as an
anti-semitic organization.)
4) As I have stated on the main page of my web site, the views
expressed on the various pages to which my web site is linked are
not necessarily views I share.
The Founding Myths of Israeli Policy

The Expulsion of
the Palestinians Re-examined (link fixed 17 August 2005) a scholarly article by Dominique Vidal (translated by Ed.
Emery) in Le Monde
diplomatique is the
result of ten years of research and discusses how 800,000 refugees were created over a
period of twenty months between 1947-49.

The
Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial published in the Journal of Palestine
Studies (links fixed 17 August 2005) by Ilan Pappe, a professor in the
department of political science at Haifa University and the author of a
number of books, including The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,
1947-1951 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1992). In this article Professor Pappe
describes the 1948 Tantura massacre, an important event of the
"Catastrophe"
(nakba), the
expulsion and attempted ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine. More
specifically, Pappe discusses the recent attempts to suppress discussion
of the event and to silence the author of the study, Teddy Katz, who
himself is a Zionist.

Palestinian
Christians: Challenges and Hopes by Professor Bernard Sabella,
Bethlehem University, Palestine. Most Americans are stunned when they
find out that roughly 14% of the Arabs living in Israel are Christian and
that they support and work together with many Palestinian Arab Muslim
groups, hoping to establish a true Palestinian state.

The Mitchell
Report The official report (published on May 20, 2001) of the Sharm
el-Sheikh fact finding
committee (established by the former President Clinton on November 7,
2000)
concerning the Al-Aqsa Intifada that began with Ariel Sharon's provocative
visit to
Masjid al-Aqsa / Temple Mount area accompanied by 1000 Israeli policeman
and that
is still continuing with both Palestinians and Israelis committing round
after round of escalating violence. The report describes the process
that led to the violence, delineates the problems involved, and proposes
solutions. It also includes comments by the Israeli government and the
official response of the PLO.

Foundation for Middle East Peace
appears to take an
objective view of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
The chief figures in the foundation are Philip C. Wilcox, former U.S.
Consul General in Jerusalem, and Geoffrey Aronson, widely published
journalist and historian. The foundation is a Washington-based
organization that is not affiliated with the U.S. government.

Truth
against Truth by Uri Avnery, one of Israel's leading peace
activists. This consists of 101 points that can both undermine
the walls of extremist Israeli and Palestinian propaganda as well
as
provide a
just foundation for a peaceful future.(2004)

Because of the utmost significance of the need for a better understanding of the
highly partisan and contentious Israeli-Palestinian problem, I have added a number of
linked articles that are more representative of a mainstream
Israeli
perspective
than the viewpoints expressed in many of the links above.
The first five articles below are from the
Jerusalem Letters, a rich
archive
published by the pro-Israeli The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Among its
articles that are particularly relevant to Islam in Israel and Palestine are the
following:

Islam and Iran

President Muhammad Khatami
A web site containing the texts of a number of President Khatami's speeches.
Some audio is also included. In his speech made on August 8,
2001, on the occasion of
his inauguration for a second term as
president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, President
Khatami made the following statement: "The meaning of religious
democracy is to reform the political system to meet the people's demands,
not to control the people and force them to meet the demands of
the state." This page is down as of 19 March, 2006; view the archived page.

Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami's Interview with CNN on January 7, 1998 demonstrates
that although there are still points of contention between the US and Iran,
the philosophical orientation of Iran shares certain principles with the
roots of American culture; these principles being religiosity, liberty,
and justice.

Modernity,
Schizochronia, and Homeless Texts by Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, an Associate
Professor of History at Illinois State University, is concerned with the
construction of Iranian history by both European and Iranian historians,
as seen from the viewpoint of postmodern discourse (link fixed 19 March 2006).

The Silencing of Professor
Abdulaziz Sachedina (link fixed 19 March 2006) Ayatollah Sistani, the chief Shi'ite religious
authority (marja' al-taqlid) of the majority of the 12 Imam Khoja
Shi'ites, recently recommended the silencing of Professor Sachedina, a
12ver Shi'ite, who is also a professor of Islamic Studies at the University
of Virginia. Among the issues for which he was criticized are his views
on religious pluralism.

Constitution
of the Islamic Republic of Iran (link fixed 17 August 2005) This translation, edited at the
International Constitutional Law (ICL) website, was based on a translation
provided by the Iranian embassy in London.

A
'Great Venture': Overthrowing the Government of Iran, is an abridged
chapter from Mark Curtis's book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign
Policy since 1945. Most Americans still have no idea that the Iranian
resentment toward Great Britain and the U.S. that in part resulted in the
Islamic revolution of 1979 was completely justified (even by Western criteria)
and was largely a result of a British and CIA sponsored coup in 1953 as
well as a result of the subsequent US political and military support of
the Shah of Iran, a support that deprived the Iranian people of their right
of self-government.

SAVAK,
was the acronym designating the Shah of Iran's secret police, who, trained
by the CIA and Israel, created a reign of terror that was an important
factor in motivating the Iranian people to revolt against and depose the
Shah.

Islam and Turkey

Fethullah
Gulen and His Liberal 'Turkish Islam' Movement, written by Professors
Bulent Aras and Omer Caha of Fatih University (Istanbul) and published in
MERIA (vol. 4:4, 2000). This is a detailed study of Fethullah Gulen and
his ideas, emphasizing his relationship to politics in Turkey.

Search
for a New Social Contract in Turkey: Fethullah Gülen, the Virtue Party
and the Kurds, discusses three major political forces outside the Kemalist
establishment in Turkey today. Fethullah Gülen is the most significant
leader of the Nurcus, the followers of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. This article
was published in the SAIS Review (volume 19:1, 1999) a scholarly journal
of Johns Hopkins Press, by M. Hakan Yavuz, Assistant Professor of Political
Science at the University of Utah.

The
Rise of the Islamist Movement in Turkey Written by Professor Nilufer
Narli of Marmara University in Turkey, this article covers the emergence
of Muslim political activity within the Turkish system in the form of four
successive political parties: National Order, National Salvation, Welfare,
and Virtue. It was published online in MERIA, vol. 3, no. 3, September,
1999.

Bediuzzaman Said
Nursi was one of the most influential 20th century Turkish Islamic
thinkers. This link is to a full-length biograpy of Said Nursi (link fixed 19 March 2006).

Harun Yahya is a prolific Turkish
writer on Islam. One of his primary concerns is the relationship betweeen
science and Islam.

Radical
Islamic Political Groups in Turkey (link fixed 9 December 2001) by Prof. Ely Karmon,
lecturer
at
the Political Science Department of Haifa University and Research Fellow
in Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzlia (Israel).
This article covers the history of the Islamic movement in Turkey, the
ideology of the movement, its enemies and strategic objectives, Islamic
political power and the problem of terrorism, the movement and its relationship
with Iran, and the goals of the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi). Prof. Karmon
concludes by stating that with the recent anti-Islamic crackdown in Turkey
signaling the closure of doorways for working with the secular Turkish
system, terrorism may increase.

Islam and Iraq

Prof. Chibli Mallat in his article on Iraq in the Oxford Encyclopedia
of the Modern Islamic World estimates that the major population groups
in Iraq in the late twentieth century are as follows: 55-60% Arab Shi'is,
15-20% Arab Sunnis, and 20% Sunni Kurds.

Muslims, Islam, and Iraq, a
website compiled by Dr. Alan Godlas, appears to be the most detailed website on Islam
in Iraq.

Sunni-Shi'i
Relations in Iraq The thesis of this article, edited by Helen Chapin
Metz and included in the Area Studies Handbook of the Library of Congress,
is that contrary to what was thought before the 1980's and in spite of
being demographically divided between Sunnis and Shi'is, political analysts
as of 1988 were maintaining that Iraq was not in danger of being split
along sectarian lines. The real tension in the country was between religious
believers and secular Ba'thists.

The
Ba'th Party in Iraq Included as part of the Area Studies Handbook of
the Library of Congress, this essay surveys the history (until 1988) of
the ruling political party in Iraq, the Ba'th, which was a product of socialist
and secular Arab nationalism.

Apocalypse
Now, (link fixed 17 August 2005) by Prof. Edward Said of Columbia University, is a critique of
U.S. policy toward 'Iraq. Because of Saddam Husayn's general persecution
of Muslim opposition to him as well as his well-documented slaughter of
Kurdish Muslims (by means of poison gas), Muslims have little sympathy
for Saddam and in general have not seen the West's attacks on Iraq and
the imposition of sanctions against 'Iraq as an attack on Islam. Nevertheless,
as Said points out, this is changing; Saddam's strategy of non-compliance,
which results in the continuation of the sanctions, has served to cause
large numbers of the 'Iraqi people (the vast majority of which are Muslims)
to suffer and die. This in turn is enabling Saddam to mobilize anger in
the Muslim world against the U.S.

Iraq's Forgotten Majority, written by Frank Smyth as an
Op-Ed editorial in the New York Times, October 3, 2002, focuses on the Shi'ite
population of Iraq, which represents about 2/3 of the population.

Islam and Saudi Arabia

Wahhabi
Theology is a concise summary written as part of the U.S. Library of
Congress Country Studies Area Handbook Series.

Wahhabiism
Exposed: Sheikh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al Wahhab(fixed: 5 Apr 2003)
is the misleading title of this on-line article (originating with the
Hidaayah Islamic Foundation [ Sri Lanka ] and placed online by the
Alharamain Foundation of
Riyadh)on the life and teachings
of Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1206/1792). The title is misleading
because the author in fact praises Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab and his
teachings, which have become dominant in Saudi Arabia and very influential
today in the Muslim world and among Muslims in the U.S. (Link fixed,
January 10, 2001)

State,
Islam,
and Opposition in Saudi Arabic: The Post Desert-Storm Phase (link fixed 9 December
2001) by Professor
Joseph Kostiner, Associate Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern
and African History, Tel Aviv University and Senior Lecturer, Moshe Dayan
Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. This July 1997 article was
published in MERIA (Middle East Review of International Affairs), a publication
of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University,
Israel.

Islamism
in Lebanon:
A Guide (link fixed 9 December 2001) by Professor A. Nizar Hamzeh, Associate
Professor and Chair
of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the
American University of Beirut. Published in MERIA (Sept. 1997), this article
deals with major Shi'i and Sunni groups, briefly notes a few minor groups,
and discusses future prospects. One of its conclusions is that an Arab-Israeli
peace settlement would significantly reduce Islamic militancy in Lebanon.

Islam and North Africa

The
Islamic Challenge
in North Africa (link fixed 9 December 2001) by Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman covers the
current political
situation of Islam in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It was published July,
1997, in MERIA (Middle East Review of International Affairs), a publication
of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University,
Israel.

Islam and Egypt

Heresy
or Hermeneutics: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (link fixed 17 August 2005) by the scholar Charles
Hirschkind discusses the recent controversy in Egypt over the modernist
interpretation of the Qur'an by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and the subsequent
successful attempt to declare him an apostate.

The Man Behind Bin
Laden: How an Egyptian doctor became a master of terror A detailed and fascinating
article about Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker (Issue Sept.
16, 20020. Aside from the
general information repeatedly noted in the media, Mr Wright has done a great deal of
investigative reporting on his own, interviewing people such as Abdallah Schleifer,
an American professor of Television Journalism at the American University in Cairo, who
knew Zawahiri and debated with him from time to time.

Muslim Brotherhood (link fixed 17 August 2005) website
contains numerous documents. The Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-muslimin),
although originating in Egypt in the 20th century, has spread throughout
the Sunni world.

Islam and Morocco

Fundamentalism
in Morocco (link fixed 17 August 2005) by Greta Meszoely is a "country report" published by the
Ibn Khaldoun Center For Development Studies, in their journal Civil
Society: Democratization in the Arab World, Volume 5, Issue 52, April
1996.

The Durus
Hassaniyah (link fixed 17 August 2005) are the lectures (in English translation) on Islamic
principles given every year
during Ramadan to the late King Hassan of Morocco by a number of the most
prominent Muslim scholars in the
world. In addition to the English translation, the lectures are included
at the website in the original Arabic as well as in French
translation (link fixed 17 August 2005).

Islam and Libya

The
Italian Colonization of Libya and the Libyan Resistance (link fixed 17 August 2005 and on 6 July 2010) From 1911 until
1931 the Libyan people, led by Shaykh 'Umar Mukhtar, attempted to resist
the ruthless Italian occupation of their country. Although the article
at this link needs some editing, it is informative and includes a great photo of Shaykh 'Umar as well as numerous photos
of the occupation.

The Green Book
of Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi is the political and social manifesto of Libya's
ruler. It is in three parts: a) The Solution to the Problem of Democracy:
The Authority of the People; b) The Solution to the Economic Problem: Socialism;
c) The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory. (Link updated March
1, 2011)

How
Arabs fight Islamism: Letter from Tunis
by Marshall J. Breger, professor of law in the Columbus School of Law at
The Catholic University of America; published in the politically conservative
American journal The
National Interest, Fall, 2003.

The
Rising Threat of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria
by James A. Phillips at the Heritage Foundation website,
Backgrounder #1060,
Nov. 9, 1995.
Although dated, this detailed article provides excellent
background for understanding the current status of Islam in
Algeria.

Islam in the Sudan

The
Heart of Dar Fur a PBS "Wide Angle" special video presentation that is the best
presentation that I
know of on Dar Fur. The major presentation is followed by an interview by Aaron Brown with
Nicolas Kristof. The website contains a great of supporting materials. (First presented
on TV in July 2008.)

Disaster in Dar
Fur by John Ryle, Chair of the Rift Valley Institute, is an
extraordinarily clear yet detailed
survey of the issues involved in the violence in Dar Fur. (The New York
Review of Books, Volume 51, Number 13, August 12, 2004).

The
Truncated Conflict in Dar Fur: An overview of Development and
Economic Issues, by D. N. N. Mayo, is a very brief article in The
Sudan Mirror on the
Web,
November 2003.

Islam, Democracy, the
State and the West (link fixed 17 August 2005) A "Round Table" discussion with Dr. Hassan al-Turabi,
Sudanese Muslim leader who was in prison for about a year but was released in 2005.

Paths of Islam in
Senegal (link fixed 17 August 2005) is a scholarly survey of the history of Islam in Senegal by Dr Mamadou
Diouf, professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University/CODESRIA
Dakar.

People in
Islam in Senegal (link fixed 22 Sept. 2005) is a list of linked pages to important contemporary Senegalese
Muslims. A number of these pages are not up and running, although one that is is the
biography of Shaykh
Abdoulaye Dieye, who is both a Sufi shaykh and a
member of the Senegalese parliament.

"Islam first appeared in Niger in the 11th century. Today most Muslims are linked
through their clerics to the Tijaniya brotherhood, which is strong among the
Tamacheq, Kanuri, Fulani, and Hausa city dwellers. Over 80 percent of Nigeriens
(i.e., citizens of Niger) live in villages of fewer than 5,000 people. There is a
training school for marabouts, (holy men), at Say, Niger's principal holy city.
There is a powerful Muslim radio ministry funded by the Arabic government based
in Niamey. There is also an Islamic university in Niamey." (From an
evangelical Christian article "Niger:
A Land
in Need of Eternal Springs of Living Water," by Daniel Jones. August 2000,

Friday
Prayers at Wa is a detailed teacher's guide to a 22 minute video by John
Hanson, who is also the author of "Islam and African Societies," in the
textbook, Africa, edited by Phyllis Martin and
Patrick O'Meara. The video is part of the CD-ROM Five Windows
into Africa which was designed to accompany the textbook Africa.

Islam
in Nigeria, a web dossier compiled by the African
Studies Center at Leiden University, briefly discusses Islam in Nigeria,
focusing on current issues. The most significant aspect of the website is
its extensive bibliography.

Conference
on Shariah in Nigeria is an excellent source containing the full texts
of the papers delivered at the conference (which was held in London, in
April of 2001) as well as links to other
important relevant papers and websites.

Zimbabwe Christians and
Muslims Seek Cooperation (link fixed 17 August 2005), a news report published in Ecumenical News
International and the Christian website Reporter-Interactive,
briefly discusses an interfaith dialogue seminar between Christians and
Muslim that was held in Zimbabwe in 1998. Among other things,
the article notes that the Muslim population of Zimbabwe has been
variously estimated at 1.2 million and also at 200,000.

Islam and Bosnia

Submission
to God By 'Alija 'Ali Izetbegovic, this is a brief excerpt from his
book, Islam
Between East and West (at Amazon.com) (link fixed 17 August 2005). Few non-scholars in the West
realize that Izetbegovic, Bosnia's Muslim president, is also a serious
intellectual completely conversant with Western thought.

Tatar
Religious Reformation by Dr. Aidar Youzeev, a senior researcher at
the Institute of History in the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, is a
short but informative article covering the most significant figures
and events in the Tatar Islamic reformation from the 18th century
until 1992.

Islam,
Iran, and the Prospects of Stability in the Caspian Region (link fixed 17 August 2005) "It's not
about ancient hatreds, it's about current policies: Islam and stability
in the Caucasus" by Brenda Shaffer,
Ph.D., former policy analyst for Israel, currently the Research Director
of the Caspian Studies Program at the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard. Although written without documentation, this article, published
in Caucasian Regional Studies (Volume 5, Issue 1 & 2, 2000), provides a
useful and insightful survey of the current situation in the region. Among
other things, Dr. Shaffer explains the geo-political reasons for Iran's
support of
Christian Armenia and opposition to Muslim Azerbaijan!

Islam in the Caucasus

The Caucasus region in Russia includes areas such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, and
Daghestan.

Islam
in the North Caucasus: A
people divided by
Yavus Akhmadov, Stephen R. Bowers, Marion T. Doss, Jr., Yulii Kurnosov
, as part of a project of James Madison University and published in January 2001.
This includes the following:

Vakhabism and
the Chechen Conflict is essential for
understanding the conflict between Sufis and the militant extremists known as
Wahhabis (Vakhabis or Vahhabis) in the
region. (Links fixed, April 29, 2006.)

Hadji Murad,
the novel (on-line) of the famous Russian writer Tolstoy, which vividly
portrays aspects of Muslim life in the occupied Caucasus, the life of the
Russian occupiers, Muslim resistance led by Shaykh Shamyl, and internecine
conflicts among the Muslim resistance. For the subsequent chapters of Hadji
Murad, see the (Link fixed, April 29, 2006.)

Islam in Central Asia

Central
Asia, More than Islamic Extremists
Regine A. Spector (Research Assistant, Foreign Policy Studies)
and Svante E. Cornell (Editor of the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst
at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School
of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins
University), published in The Washington Quarterly,
Winter 2002.

Islam as a
Political Force in Central Asia (link fixed 17 August 2005), a policy paper on the International
Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) website, is a paper written by a
number or scholars as a product of a policy forum convened by IREX at the
U.S. Department of State in order to address the impact Islam has on the
various Central Asian Countries.

Islam and Tajikistan

Dictatorship and Civil
War in Central Asia: Tajikistan by Alan Fogelquist of the Eurasia Research
Center, this is the first article on the web that I have seen that clarifies
the current situation in Tajikistan, specifically identifying the Islamic
opposition to the government and explaning the causes of the oppostion.

Islam, State-Building
and Uzbekistan's Foreign Policy (link fixed 17 August 2005) by Henry E. Hale Ph.D., a Research
Associate at Harvard. This on-line article was originally published in
The
New Geopolitics of Central Asia and Its Borderlands, edited by Banuazizi
and Weiner (1994).

Islam and Indonesia

Gus
Dur: an obituary article. Written shortly after his death on Dec.
30, 2009, this article, published in The Economist, is a
delightful portrayal of this Muslim leader and Sufi, who rose to become
the president of Indonesia and still managed to keep alive a wonderful
sense of humor.

President Gus
Dur, Indonesia, Islam, and Reformasi (link fixed 17 August 2005) by Professor Mark R. Woodward,
of Arizona State University. Woodward begins his scholarly article with a
brief overview of Indonesia and Islam. Subsequently he discusses President
Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid) and the vision of Islam put forth by the
Nahdlatul Ulama, and then Woodward speaks about the relationship between
President Wahid, Islamism, and the Sociology of Islam.

The Islamic
Factor in Indonesia's Political Transition (link fixed 17 August 2005), by Suzaina Kadir and
published originally in the Asian Journal of Political Science,
7:2 (December 1999), discusses, among other things, Islamic groups and
democratization, the general nature of Islam in Indonesia, the
contemporary manifestations of traditional divergences and tensions, the
Islamic cultural revival and a united ummat, the major Islamic
political party, the Nahdlatul Ulama (which is now the ruling party),
Islamic groups of the recent Reformasi movement, the June 1999 elections,
and prospects for a "Middle-Axis" coalition.

Islam in Modern
Indonesia A Conference Cosponsored by the United States-Indonesia Society
and the
Asia Foundation, February 7, 2002, in Washington, D.C. Among the information included
at this webpage is the executive summary of the conference as well as detailed
summaries of all of the scholarly presentations.

Indonesia and Islam: Before and
After 9/11 published in Peacework (December 2001/ January 2002) by Ehito
Kimura, a graduate student studying comparative politics of
Southeast Asia at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Islam and Malaysia

Anwar Online is
a site dedicated to Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister of
Malaysia, who was recently deposed by the Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad.
Mr. Ibrahim, the former protege of Mahathir Mohamad, was arrested, emprisoned,
and is currently on trial for what seems to be trumped up charges.

'Islam,
Adat and Multiculturalism in Malaysia written by Marion Bowman of Bath
College of Higher Education in the UK, clarifies and discusses the tensions
between Gulf Islam and Malaysian Islam, particularly between Gulf cultural
tradition and Malaysian adat (custom or cultural tradition).

Islam in the Philippines

Muslim
Separatism in the Philippines, an interview with Professor Thomas McKenna,
professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama and author of Muslim
Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern
Philippines.

Politics
and Religion in India Today consists of two papers: Castes
and Islam in
Tamil Nadu and Islam and the Brotherhood of the
Afflicted written by Lars Kjćrholm (Aarhaus University, India
Studies Courier, February, 2001) and focusing on the region of
Tamil Nadu.

Islam and Pakistan

According to the journalist, Ahmed Rashid, in his book, Taliban:
Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale: 2000),
Mullah Omar,
the amir (leader) of the Taliban, is in constant contact with
Maulana Samiul Haq, who is the head of the Haqqania madrasah
(religious school), which is located in Akhora Khatak near Peshawar (in
the Northwest Frontier province in Pakistan).
Rashid states that Samiul Haq "helps him [Mullah Omar] deal with
international relations and offers advice on important Sharia decisions
(legal decisions)." Samiul Haq is also the head of the Jamiat-e
Ulema-Islam (JUI), which is a society that leaders of the Deobandi school
had
originally established in order to propagate their beliefs; and also,
Ahmed Rashid
describes Samiul Haq as having established the most important breakaway,
extremist faction of the JUI. For mention of Samiul Haq on the web, see
the 1999 article carried by BBC news.

Biography of Maududi
(1903-1979), one of the most influential modern Muslim thinkers. The source
of this biography appears to be a book or an article titled "Islamic Perspective,"
published by the Islamic Foundation (UK), 1989. The biography is on the
web at the site of the Jamaat-e-Islami,
the organization founded by Maududi.

The
Finality of Prophethood, an on-line book by Sayyid Abul al-A'la Maududi
(or Mawdudi) (1903-1979). Founder of the Jama'at-i Islami (the Islamic
Party), Maududi's thought has influenced Muslim activists all over the
Muslim world.

Islam and Kashmir

Violations of
Human Rights and U.N. Mandate in Kashmir This link consists of a briefing
paper titled, "The Kashmiri War: Human Rights and Humanitarian Law," prepared
by Karen Parker, J.D. and presented to The United Nations Commission on
Human Rights, 1996 Session, March, in Geneva.

Islam in Panama

A Brief History of the Muslims in Panama (link fixed 18 August 2005), originally published in The Message, Canada (August,
1997), is a relatively detailed article by Dr. AbdulKhabeer Muhammad,
who in 1997 was the director of the International Center for Islamic Research and
Studies.

Islam in Peru

Islam in Guyana

Muslims
in Guyana (link fixed 18 August 2005), by Raymond Chickrie, is a documented and detailed article
giving
the history and main characteristics of the Muslim community in Guyana
(South America). Muslims make up roughly 10% of the population of Guyana.

Pan-Islamic Movements in Modern World

The Muslim Brotherhood

al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (The Muslim
Brotherhood) Although it originated in Eygpt, the Muslim Brotherhood
has now become established in over seventy countries. This page, in spite
of its numerous mistakes in English, is a useful overview. The Brotherhood,
although more militant in its early years, recently seems to be attempting
to work patiently with the existing political systems in the Arab world.

The Muslim Brotherood
web page looks promising, but only one of its subpages has been constructed,
The Writings of Hasan al-Banna. This link (fixed 18 August 2005), however, is well developed and
is useful for readers investigating the ideas of the Brotherhood's founder,
Hasan al-Banna. (Down as of October 17, 2001.)

Islam
and Women: The Case of the Tablighi Jama'at a scholarly
article by
Prof. Barbara Metcalf
of the University of California, Davis, provides a useful survey of the
history of Tablighi Jama'at and then focuses on the position of women in
the movement. (Stanford Electronic Humanities Review, vol.
5, issue 1, February 1996.)(Link fixed, April 12, 2004.)

Populations, Maps, and Countries of the Muslim World

Demographics (Population Statistics) of the Muslim World

Country by Country Statistics
of Muslim Populations (link fixed 18 August 2005) In order to find the country or region you are looking for,
scroll down and then at the bottom right hand corner of the page, click to go on to the next
page. This is from the website of Adherents.com,
which has population statistics on all the world's religions and sects.

Websites for the Countries of the Muslim World

Most people in the West think of Islam as a Middle Eastern religion.
Nevertheless, Islam is clearly a South Asian, South East Asian, Central
Asian, African, and Middle Eastern religion, with a growing presence in
Europe and North America.

Web
Resources for Central Asia, part of the web site of
the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC) at Indiana
University, contains numerous links to all of the countries in Central
Asia as well as links to the region as a whole.

Muslim World Internet
Resources At this site, there are links to sites concerning most of
the countries with significant Muslim populations. A number of
Muslim countries are omitted from it, however. Among them are
the following Muslim Countries in the CIS (Commonwealth
of Independent States), which were former colonies of the Soviet
Union:

Azerbaijan (link fixed 18 August 2005)
This link consists of a comprehensive article (with linked maps)
describing Azerbaijan and its history. The article, by Adil Baguirov,
draws on material from the CIA
World Factbook and an article written by Dr. Tadeusz Swietochowski, an
authority on Azerbaijan.

Kazakstan
This site, developed by the Interactive Central Asia Resource Project
(ICARP), includes original material and well-organized links.
(Link fixed, October 7, 2001.)

A number of African countries with significant Muslim populations were
omitted from the Muslim World Internet Resources site noted above.
These are listed as follows, along with the percentage of their population
that is Muslim (a number of the links below were fixed on 16 January
2001):